


Oneirology

by Helicidae



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Abuse, Amnesia, Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-16
Updated: 2011-04-25
Packaged: 2017-10-18 04:09:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 15,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/184818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Helicidae/pseuds/Helicidae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John wakes in a strange room, injured and bewildered, to slowly find that memories are more important - and less reliable - than he has ever imagined before.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Daydreams (http://archiveofourown.org/works/288946/chapters/461336) reveals some of the missing scenes from this story.

He woke slowly and to a lumpish, aching haze: eyes blurred as he stared at the shadowed ceiling and mouth sloppy as he bit back a groan of pain. His whole right side felt like one massive bruise while sharp tingling like vicious pins and needles ran up twitchy legs. Skin too tight, pulling at the movement, like scabs. He put a hand to his stomach, running the pads of his fingers over the bare skin. No, not like scabs. It was scabbing. Tilting his head forward he resisted the urge to throw up as best he could when his stomach rebelled and throat bobbed uncontrollably.

 _What? What happened?_

Sore eyes looking around the room, peering to squint past the mound of pillows and duvets he was sunk into. The distraction only lasted a few seconds as the fuzzy sights prompted no secondary thoughts or reactions, so he closed his eyes tight shut again. Head felt like it was stuffed with abrasive steel wool. That was hardly a medical symptom but he could barely think let alone make a coherent diagnosis. Skull felt as if it had been the victim of one of those blunt force trauma experiments that – that –

The thought ground to a halt as neither name nor face occurred, though he knew it should have done. A rich, deep voice saying something – then it was gone, forgotten, like a dream. A half-memory of dark shirts and dark hair. Disorientated he opened his eyes, searching the out of focus room for something, someone. It was night-time outside, the curtains were mostly drawn and a street-light shone an orange stripe onto the opposite wall. Nothing happened, nothing but the beat of blood in his ears and the tinny, roaring background noise that he was not quite sure whether was real or merely the psychological result of a recent head injury. The recent head injury. A word surfaced (tinnitus), then descended back into the muddle.

He was not quite sure whether something was meant to happen or not. Anxiety swung his head in circles.

He eventually drifted off to a fitful, pained sleep.

.

.

It was morning when he next woke, and though the world had sharpened into visual clarity it was still a world where moving even to breath brought pain, and nothing was recognised. He thought he ought to be more worried than what he was: that it was bad how he could not remember how he had arrived here, where here was, or even what here was. But he was just so tired, sore, and even arranging thoughts into order seemed like far too much effort. Putting one hand to his face – sharp, sharp agony – he felt bandages under his fingers, wrapped around his skull and over one eye. Confusion bubbled unpleasantly in his chest as he saw his arm also bandaged neatly, only then recognised the feel of heavy medication. Hospital? But this wasn’t a hospital, that was clear enough even to a struggling mind.

He should know hospitals. He’d been in enough of them, hadn’t he? Patient, but from what? School, what school? Medical school, which one? He was a doctor, yes. Who were his colleagues? But hadn’t he been with the police at one point? The army?

When he opened his mouth his voice emerged as a withered mutter, barely a gasp crawling from a raw throat, and he coughed dryly. Pain flared up his chest and he dimly labelled at least some of his ribs as broken.

Footfall in the hallway and the plain white door creaked open before he could muster a response more appropriate than bleariness. The person looked at him. Who was it? He didn’t recognise him.

“John?” the man said, tone some sort of happy, and John thought that he should know how but for his brain refusing to cooperate. The man stood in the doorway, eager sharp eyes and black hair, dressed in smart navy. It was familiar but frustratingly slowly, like half recognising an actor from one film to the next. Something primal, something that set his heart quickening, rose from the back of his mind.

John furrowed his brow, mouth open again but too dry and with no words to speak. The man’s expression morphed into something else. Curiosity, perhaps. Something in John wanted to say worry but it really, really didn’t look like worry. It looked like how someone would examine at a fascinating, anomalous specimen in a Petri dish, or in a laboratory rat cage.

Coughing harshly again John curled around his burning ribs, grinding his teeth as the movement jerked the rest of his body into fresh pain. Tears gathered, unwilling, into clenched eyes. The man was forgotten as the world condensed into a blinding ball of agony and bewilderment. Even reduced to helplessness he was too prideful to think fear, and he brushed that away as angrily as he could. When he finally felt his abused muscles relax it seemed like an age had passed and he was exhausted, ready to fall back to sleep, if sleep would come.

Something was pressing on his forehead, something cool, and opening his eyes John eagerly and automatically reached out for the glass of water presented to him. Another hand supported the bottom and prevented it all from spilling when scraped and blistered fingers were too hasty, but John was more than thirsty enough to not pay any attention to surreptitious help. The water tasted foul as it met a mouth that was thick with bile, chemicals and blood, but he had drank fouler things before and it felt like a blessing on his hot throat.

“Thank you,” John whispered, eyes lolling closed. The other man was a silent presence, merely standing, as a troubled sleep was once again reached.


	2. Chapter 2

John had seen enough and been lectured enough in his life to know that memory loss could be due to many factors. One of the good examples of a multifactorial condition, even. He could list them off in his mind, when the world stopped tilting enough to let his thoughts settle, and he did. More times than strictly necessary: but there was nothing else to do, nothing to do with nothing to ground himself in a world that seemed suddenly larger and more incomprehensible then he thought it must had done before, because he still couldn’t remember a damn thing at all. Didn’t know what had happened to him, didn’t know where he was.  Even Harriet - Harriet! his sister! - eluded him, nothing more than a name and a vague recollection of childhood memories that slipped away as fast as they came.

His medical training, at least, appeared to have stayed, and for that he was thankful. Memories he could deal with losing, new memories were easily created. Friends could quickly fill him in. A medical degree and years of experience, on the other hand, was rather harder to get. In theory, anyway.

He was only assuming that he did actually remember all of his doctor’s training, after all, and that the reason he didn’t miss any of his friends or his past wasn’t just because he couldn’t remember them to begin with.

John sat and tried to ignore the pain to sleep, and when that was impossible he did the only thing left and stared at the room, tracking up and down the lines of the furniture. The room itself was pleasant enough but it was also Spartan, hardly stimulating the mind with its four cream walls, desk, bed and a window that looked out onto stereotyped terraced houses across the road.

 _Boring_. The word repeated itself in his head. It wasn’t one of his words: the cadence and lazy roll of it were all wrong for something he’d say. _Boring. Dull._

 _Tea, thanks._

He had a phone, only he couldn’t remember where he had put it. Even if he did have it, John didn’t think he would have the first idea as to who to possibly contact or what the hell he’d say.

 _Hello, I’ve managed to sustain several serious injuries and also amnesia, I’m bedridden and in pain and have very little idea as to who you actually are to me right now, but I thought I’d ring anyway for a little chat. How are you?_

He hadn’t managed to get out of the bed long enough to be able to look for the thing, anyway. He could barely walk. Maybe it was destroyed in whatever had happened. Maybe he’d had it and used it the last time he’d been awake. Maybe he’d only put it in a pocket somewhere and that information had been lost in transit from short to long term memory, not that long ago.

John pulled the soft blanket up around his ears. Memory loss. Theoretically it wasn’t so bad. The idea still tasted sour and made his cramping stomach troubled, made him nervous as if he were somewhere he shouldn’t be. Memory loss. Causes of memory loss. Brain infections, brain damage, growths, anaerobic conditions, drugs, genetic disease. Brain surgery. Old age. Dissociative disorder. The catalogue went on and on, each cause branching out into five more lists. It was something to think about at any rate, especially since even after what must be at least five days, he couldn’t bring to mind much more than a few concrete hours.

He had considered the lists as much as he recalled them and wondered which of the problems was plaguing him now, and whether he had worked it out or been told already and had simply forgotten it. Whether he was now dying due to some swelling of the meninges. He thought bitterly, and more than once, that he probably had, and probably was.

The days stretched on by in undistinguishable stutters and lumps while the world turned into a nightmare of wounds, bed-rest and bitter confusion; of hating the knowledge that when he next fell asleep he’d probably forget whatever he’d thought or worked out, even if it wasn’t worth remembering in the first place. What was the point of doing anything if he wouldn’t remember it later? Every now and then he’d get up to stumble into the bathroom next door to his room. He’d wash with a flannel and soap but by his stubble and smell John guessed he hasn’t had a proper shower for a while. Once the man from earlier – the only person he can remember seeing since who knew how long – had come in and checked his bandages, injecting something into his arm. He had woken as well to find him sitting by the bed, just watching. They’d probably spoken, though he wasn’t confident of that, and certainly not of what they had spoke about. He didn’t think he’d been any further down the corridor than the bathroom, but still he wasn’t sure. John was sure, however, that if he hadn’t the pain and the sheer tiredness to focus on, to sleep off, then he would be fair stark raving mad by now.

Sometimes he stared at the window, something in his chest tight, and wanted nothing more than to jump down to the street and _run_.

.

.

When the man entered his room (and he has come to think of it as his room now, though he was cautious about it and wouldn’t dare say so aloud), John didn’t speak, because he knew that they’d spoken before but he didn’t remember what about, and he didn’t want to humiliate himself by repeating old questions. He was sat up, propped on generic yet expensive white pillows as he tried to ignore how the scabs on his legs and hands and face and body were itchy, how his head was aching again and how he was sure his right leg would hurt less if it were just cut off. Vague memories, conversations he was not entirely convinced actually happened flitted though his mind as the man with the eyes as clever as they were sharp stared at him. But he remembered snatches, and did his best to piece them together. 

“Sherlock,” he said, not because the name meant anything to the current situation (or at least he didn’t think it did), but because no matter how odd the actual word was, it sprang to mind in spare moments and rolled from his tongue. It felt normal, natural. It was tied to confidence and to home. He tried to say it without the end lilting up to form a question, but like last time, failed.

The man lent forwards, a twitch pulling up the corners of his mouth in a tight smile. It made John want to press backwards, though he stopped himself from moving. The man nodded when neither said anything else, and with a small jolt John remembered that yes, this was one of those conversations they’d already had.

“Sherlock,” he said again, searching the almost-familiar face. “That was… you said… you.”

“Sherlock Holmes,” the man confirmed, and tidy hands locked fingers in his lap. John nodded, still uncertain, the movement small as his headache grew from painful to stabbing. He remembered that he had shared a flat with a Sherlock. He remembered a comfy chair and old wallpaper, remembered loud arguments, though he couldn’t think of what they were about. He remembered where the kettle was in the kitchen and that there was – used to be – an unopened jar of instant coffee that was absolutely to be left alone except for emergencies. He remembered trusting Sherlock with his life.

The rest might never have happened. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t place faces in the flat. He couldn’t see Sherlock sitting on the sofa, or at the kitchen table. He knew there was a landlord, but only because he remembered paying the rent.

“John?” the man said, leaning further forward, dark eyes watching him.

“’m alright,” John mumbled, arching his back as he shifted, trying again to push away all feeling and anxiety. Chronic pain. No, acute pain. But it was small wonder, what with the broken bones, second degree burns, lacerations and severe bruising he’d inventoried earlier. “I’m fine, honestly.”

The sceptical look in the man’s eyes didn’t need to be put into words, and so they returned to sitting in their own thoughts.

John woke from a light doze as the man returned. He held a glass of water in one hand and a plate with some toast and scrambled egg in the other. The toast was a little burnt around the edges but otherwise hardly deserving of the reaction John’s stomach gave to it. Swallowing hard and curling up he shook his head at the plate, just a little pathetically – but he didn’t dare risk opening his mouth even though he was certain that there was nothing in him to bring up.

“You need to eat,” the man said, brow furrowing and with an expression somewhere between irritated, exasperated and worried. John knew that that was true, that to heal properly he needed nourishment, protein and vitamins and everything they said about balanced diets. He didn’t quite manage to find it within himself to care, though the thought nagged him that it was only making himself dependent on others for longer. He couldn’t remember eating, and while he supposed that he must have done at some point, weight had certainly fallen off his frame (or maybe he’d been this thin anyway), and the healing process seemed to be taking twice as long as it should have.

The plate was set down carefully on the desk across the room and the glass handed to John. He drank it obediently under the man’s watchful eye, stoically ignoring the bitter, chemical taste he could only describe as like medicine. He supposed, of course, that that was likely to be exactly the right description.

When the water was finished the glass was taken and set down by the toast and eggs. “You know,” John said, then hesitated. He was feeling more lucid than normal, which he hoped was good, though he still felt like he hadn’t slept for days as opposed to doing little else, combined with a particularly bad hangover. But he wasn’t sure whether they’d discussed the amnesia topic before, or even if the man knew. He might think John was merely disorientated from the injuries.

John knew even before his mouth opened that it was a stupid thought, because of course he knew. Even if he hadn’t made it obvious there was no way in hell he could hide something from this man. Every time he looked at John it felt like a dissection, like he was a bug pinned and neatly labelled on a card.

“My memory,” John said anyway. “It’s not – I’m not –”

“I know,” the man interrupted, mouth drawing out into a mild grimace. He didn’t say any more and John couldn’t think of a single thing to add, so he stared at the folds in the duvet, embarrassed and feeling absurdly chagrined.

It was seven minutes later, according to the blinking digital clock on the desk, when the man got up, rolling one shoulder. He picked up the empty glass and plate of cold food, gesturing to the latter vaguely.

“Are you sure? I could get you something else?” he said, a little awkwardly, staring at the yellow grey mush in mild distaste.

“No,” John replied with a faint smile, even as he began to realise the world was blurring around the edges again. The man shrugged and turned to leave.

“Sherlock?” said John, without thinking. The word felt more odd than it had, this time. Pausing next to the doorway, one foot pushing open the door, Sherlock looked back.

“Yes?” he said, simply.

“Uh, I mean,” John stumbled. “Thanks. Thank you. For, well, this, I s’pose. Everything.”

Sherlock only smiled, crookedly, and left.


	3. Chapter 3

John waited until he heard the front door close before he started his count of twelve minutes, watching the red digits on the clock face blink on and off, on and off. He didn't have a clue whether twelve minutes was too long a time or if it was not long enough, since he didn't have anything other than a complete guess to go by.

He wasn't even sure why he was waiting until he was alone. But it was… important. It felt like it ought to be important.

He needed to be out of that room, he needed to do something for himself (he needed to get away, which was stupid, why did he need to get away?). It had been just under a fortnight, according to Sherlock, since he'd first woken. Sherlock hadn't said what he'd woken from and John hadn't questioned it, not after seeing the heavy gaze, the I-dare-you-to-ask-because-I-won't-ever-say expression. Or maybe he had asked.

It was hard – impossible, even – to know whether he was losing memories as fast as he was gaining them, if what Sherlock had said about fourteen days was true. When all he ever saw was the same two rooms, the same man, the same food, an impaired memory wasn’t necessary for the days to blend together endlessly. But that didn't warrant not knowing if yesterday was actually yesterday and not two or three days ago. Not knowing if he was repeating the same actions day in, day out, the same mistakes.

Though he was more lucid now, though he could think without his thoughts stumbling into each other like drunkards, he had a feeling that he was far from better. The stitches and bandages attested to that.

Whatever was happening in the long run, it didn’t make the short term any more bearable. He had woken one day to find himself clean shaven, showered and with new bandages but no clue of how he had got that way, or of the multiple times he had found himself in new clothes or on new sheets without being aware he had even moved since falling asleep. Sherlock avoided conversations that carried on from previous conversations (or probably avoided conversations altogether). The terrible thing about trying to control or record lost memories, John realised, was that it was just not possible. He could be missing hours or days and never know. He could live the rest of his life and die of old age, feeling like the past forty years were forty snippets of year each an hour long.

It was frustrating, and frightening. Endlessly so. It was worse than the way he threw up eighty percent of whatever he ate, and that however he lay some part of him ached or itched or hurt. It was worse than not being able to walk without having to stop every two steps to regain a sense of balance and to push down the pain. Whatever medication he was on, whatever he was being fed and (he suspected) injected with, did not seem to be helping in any way. And John remembered chronic pain, of being shot, of living with a limp, if only through slippery moments. He remembered medication. He would know.

The numbers on the clock flicked to nine thirty-two and John banished his thoughts as quickly as he could, shuffling on the bed to swing his legs over the side. They protested angrily at the movement, jarring and making him wince, and his arms started to shake and burn as if he were lifting a ten stone weight rather than merely propping his upper body vertical. His head felt like he'd been swinging in circles, dizzy and nauseous, and swallowing John held still for a long moment and waited for the worst of the spasms that shivered though his limbs to fade.

The clock read nine thirty-eight by the time John had stood up and shuffled to the door, pulling a woollen jumper over the t-shirt he'd been sleeping in. It was his, he knew that definitely, found neatly folded up on his desk one morning: a plain, comforting thing, baggier then he's thought it had been. Then again, he thought he'd been larger, not this unhealthy level of thin. He hadn't been this thin since the only gangly stage he'd ever been through, back decades ago in early teens.

He'd stopped looking in the bathroom mirror when his reflection came back sallower and more hollow with every appearance, dry skin and dark bags under tired eyes.

.

.

The ring tone – his own tone, his own phone – was coming out of the walls or from inside the furniture, but he couldn't see where. The sleek home-phone in hand, its dial tone echoing the mobile ring, John pitched around in confused circles.

.

.

"Are you useless? Can't you do anything?" Sherlock snarled, actually snarled, with straight teeth and pulled back lips, dark eyes opened wide. His usual lilting, soft tone was more honest than John had ever heard it before. His over-blown expression should have been comic, only it wasn’t.

John's knees buckled, half from surprise and fear and half because Sherlock was pushing his captured wrist back and down so that his arm twisted painfully. "Sherlock," he shouted hoarsely, stumbling for the name as his mind went blank, trying to bring up something else that wasn't there, a name that wasn’t there. "Sherlock!" John hit the floor with a heavy thump, rolled automatically and hit his spine painfully on the edge of the door, head on the wall. He saw points of light obscuring his vision as he held back dry retches.

Sherlock dropped his arm as if it were distasteful and crossed the room with quick, short strides. When he turned around his expression was a controlled boredom, as if they had just had a petty argument rather than an actual fight, breathing normal. The only difference was that his short hair was ruffled from when John had attempted to shove him away and missed, getting half a palm of scalp rather than face or chest. John pushed himself up, shaking, and lent heavily against the back of the sofa.

"If you must," Sherlock said, bitingly, "write it down." Then he stalked off, down the stairs and out of the house without another word.

John, shaking badly, made his way back to his room, painstakingly slowly. He was exhausted, legs barely keeping him upright, and he lowered himself onto the mattress after checking his stitches. The actions were mechanical. Barely understanding what had just happened, he barely remembered what the other’s reaction was for. Remember this, he told himself, though some part of him wanted just the opposite. For God's sake John, don't forget. Don't forget.

.

.

John woke with a start, whole body aching intensely from the movement, and rolling over climbed under the duvet. It was cold, three fifty one according to the clock, and he felt exposed in the dark. He'd had a nightmare, but knew that it wasn't a nightmare, it was real. His wrist hurt disproportionally, and John could still feel strong fingers squeezing the bones together.

He drank the glass of water sitting on his bedside table, lying on his back as he tried to relax shivering muscles. It didn't work. The thought of getting out, of leaving, crossed his mind. He could stay at Harry's – he could camp out on the streets.  Where was he?  Where did Harry live?

He didn't move. Sherlock probably didn't mean anything, didn't mean any harm. Isn't he always like that, just it got out of hand then? It was something I said (I don’t remember what I said). It was my fault. The uncomfortable, frankly humiliating thought that he sounded too much like victims of domestic abuse crossed his mind. He pushed that thought aside quickly. They were just friends, and friends had arguments occasionally, that was inevitable. Just a scuffle between friends, between two guys. That was natural. That he had actually been frightened, terrified, well, that was only because he wasn't thinking straight now, what with the head wound and medication. 

He can't be like that normally. He couldn't have been like that before. Sherlock wasn't abusive and he wasn't a victim. He knew himself comfortably even if he didn't know the other man, and knew without a doubt that he'd never be part of that sort of relationship, friendship or not. Of course.

That knowledge ignored completely the fact that he was desperately trying to make up excuses for Sherlock, and that the bruising was dark and painful.

.

.

When he woke again, tangled in the sheets of his bed, it was early morning and dawn swaddled the room in greyscale. It was with a dull, dreaded realisation that John thought back to the evening before and only remembered bare snatches.


	4. Chapter 4

John had wondered how Sherlock would react to him after their fight the previous day. He'd not a single clue, but he'd guessed out a list, the most likely at the beginning. If it had been written on paper it would have had a lot of messy scribbles, crossed out sections and several drafts, but by and large and missing out several lesser categories it was: the pretend-it-never-happened, the cold shoulder, and then the over-friendly silent apology. He hadn't even bothered with considering a verbal apology. He wasn't that optimistic.

As it turned out, and to John's vague apprehension, he didn't know his flatmate well at all.

Sherlock hadn't knocked on entering, but then again he never did. He was carrying his usual glass of water, a hesitant almost-smile and also a bowl, steaming slightly and smelling strongly of grease, MSG and pork.  He winced, a sympathetic mimicry, and murmured a soft apology.

John stared at Sherlock and then at the takeaway in poorly concealed surprise – his favourite, or at least one of them, he must have told the other man some time ago – and realised that he was actually very hungry. Wrong footed, he tried to ignore the apology after offering back a wan smile.  He wondered when he had last eaten, and stopped that train of thought before he could pinpoint an actual event. John shuffled into more of a sitting position than his former slouch and berated himself for wondering what the catch was, what his end of the unspoken deal would be.

"Thank you," he murmured, not knowing what else to say as the bowl was set down in his hands. He glanced at Sherlock and noticed guiltily that there was a light bruise on his forehead (guiltily because he could ignore the new finger shaped bruises formed around his wrist with more ease than was likely healthy). But Sherlock didn't mention anything, didn't say anything, only nodding slightly as he backed away and watched with those knife-sharp eyes of his while John took the first few bites of the meal.

Just as John was about to start squirming under the intense inspection and ask if nothing else what Sherlock had been keeping in the fridge to make the pork taste as it did (because it did taste strange, he wouldn't be asking solely to break the silence, and why did he think that there would be something unsavoury in the fridge?), Sherlock got up, picking his way around the room in a casual survey. His expression was that of extreme, faux-hidden satisfaction.

It was with a mildly queasy feeling that John finished his meal, eating in silence as he tried not to look at the other man peer around the room. If he was searching for something John couldn't think of what it could be, since the place was about as sterile and impersonal as a cheap hotel room: the only things of John's being one pair of shoes and a small pile of clothes inside the wardrobe (he couldn't find any clothes hangers and didn't want to ask: he recalled searching for hangers a while ago). The rest of his belongings he half hoped would turn up eventually, and half was resigned to the fact that he'd probably never see them again.

His laptop he missed as something useful but not something he was overly sentimental about. His phone, gun and credit cards he worried about significantly more but each for completely different reasons. John couldn't bring himself to care about the rest.  To be completely honest he was too tired to care about anything.

Sherlock left after he'd finished eating, slinking out of the room in a smug manner with the empty bowl and glass. John would have been more curious about the generous behaviour were he not concentrating on the painful twinge poking about somewhere in his ribcage.

He dozed instead, disliking the laziness about himself but lacking the energy to get up and do something – as if there was something to do. He had no job, no hobbies, nothing to read, no laptop. The will to speak to Sherlock was all but non-existent. Half asleep, John didn't actually feel this new pain until he rolled over to stop the pressure of lying on a row of stitches that were making his leg ache.

It felt like he'd been shot through the stomach, a solid kick of absolute pain. Biting his tongue in shock hard enough to make it bleed John curled up reflexively and then even tighter when the agony only increased, sharp and sudden and enough to make the man gasp, eyes tearing up. He could feel himself shaking, stomach rattling inside of him like a sack of nails. He gagged dryly, forced himself upright and fell onto the carpeted floor in a shivering heap. He vomited the takeaway onto the floor, sight melting out and returning in sporadic bursts.

How he got to the living room was a mystery, but a mystery he couldn't think about, since his thoughts seemed scattered like scrap paper. "Sherlock," he croaked at the man, who was staring at him, unsurprised and unmoved, from his chair next to the window. He'd went to find a painkiller, he remembered, any painkiller: ibuprofen, morphine, _anything_ , but he didn't know where anything was, and so found himself nowhere except for on the sofa instead of the bed and with a cushion rather than a pillow clutched to his chest. It felt like someone was ramming a knife into his insides, twisting it with every tiny movement.

"Sherlock please," he croaked again, closing his eyes as his insides seemed to spasm, all dignity lost. "Hurts. Please."

Footsteps crossed the room and his upper body was pushed aside so that he was propped up on something warm and large and hard. Bony fingers curling around the loose corners of a shirt John dimly realised that it was Sherlock he was clinging to, Sherlock's shoulder he was leaning on. He lent closer, but just for a moment.

Sherlock was only an inch or two taller than him, and sitting side by side they would be near to the same height if not for John's hunched neck and curled spine. He almost let himself relax before two careful fingers found the knotted, tense muscle in the back of his neck and kneaded into a pressure point deliberately, making John arch out in the sudden pain, gasping. John wriggled reflexively but was held still as sore muscles were pressed and poked, causing his legs to kick out and raw throat to make low, sobbing noises.

"Sherlock," he stuttered, as the probing fingers made their way to the ball of agony that was his stomach. "Stop. Please. Stop it."

Sherlock hushed him, humming pleasantly under his breath as the man in his lap writhed, pressing viciously into John's abdomen with one stiff hand and massaging his sweat-streaked scalp with the other.

John blacked out.

.

.

"Sherlock," John said, nervously, trying not to sound like a school-kid who'd just realised they'd been caught cheating in a test and failing miserably. Anything to break the silence that stretched across the room, blanketing the two men as they sat in their respective places: John on the bed and Sherlock at the desk. 

Sherlock hummed a casual, half interested note, looking up with round mocking eyes. "Yes?" he asked.

"You never seem to do any cases anymore," John blurted out. "Lestrade used to call you every other day, practically. Before, I mean. For cases. And now he doesn't."

"Yes," Sherlock said, as he looked down as if reading the sheets of blank paper piled neatly in front of him. They'd appeared one day, and only when he'd gone to write something on them did John realise that he had no pen. Sherlock's voice was bland and dismissive. John didn't dare say anything more, only returned to watching his bed sheets and trembling hands.

.

.

John didn't know whether it was good or bad that he was laughing, only that it felt like lancing an old, old infection as chuckles bubbled up from his chest. Sherlock was leaning forward, eyes alight as he continued his story, a case from early years John that had never heard of before. It wasn't particularly funny – even slightly cruel, only John wanted to laugh, God it felt like he needed to laugh at something, anything, before he went completely insane.

.

.

He could walk mostly fine now, and the sutures had dissolved to leave neat tracks across his pale, unhealthy skin. But he hadn't been out, still hadn't seen a single person except for Sherlock since – since before. Not anyone he remembered.  He'd realised long ago that there was no calendar in the flat, and with no phone or computer or telly he'd managed to completely lose track of days.

Somehow he hadn't minded. Somehow the lethargy took him over whenever he felt the need to leave, the pain when he felt healthy enough. He'd lose his balance and fall down the stairs or spill boiling tea over his hands and Sherlock would be there, sometimes as a comforting help and sometimes not. 

John knew very well that nothing was right. He wasn't stupid. He just couldn’t remember how it was wrong.


	5. Chapter 5

“Moriarty,” Sherlock said, his voice holding a distant hatred, a smug anger. John’s head lolled against the other man’s collarbone, feeling relaxed and almost euphoric despite for the manicured nails digging into his side where the skin was still raw from healing burns. Happy drunk, though he hadn’t been drinking.  He didn’t think so, anyway. They weren’t the burns he had got from ages back, from back _then_ , but newer ones. The old ones had gone long ago. He didn’t know where these had come from, only that they looked like electricity burns, and they didn’t look accidental. Somehow, even though a part of him told him otherwise, they were easy to dismiss. Nothing ever staying in mind for long.

John concentrated solely on the other man’s voice, drifting on it, even thought he knew Sherlock’s little speech on Moriarty by heart: knew the admiration and the arrogance and the desire to burn. It made him wonder just how many times he has heard it, since he had long accepted that his memory was simply just not good enough anymore. The minutes passed and eventually John dozed off: exhausted even though he’d done nothing but sit and sleep all day, as Sherlock wrapped an arm around his shoulders and held him close. 

.

.

John didn’t know where he was or what he was doing, only that he was outside, lost, and the few people that were around were giving him strange looks. The dim evening sun was cut through by garish streetlights, the wind blew damp and freezing though his thin shirt, raising gooseflesh. A woman crossed the road to avoid him. He could feel anxiety bubbling up his throat, swamping his brain, and he needed Sherlock: Sherlock was meant to be there, Sherlock was always there. Sherlock had been just next to him, he was sure, only he wasn’t sure about anything. It was irrational, this was irrational, he attempted to tell himself.

He was shivering; his legs felt like he’d just sprinted from wherever he’d come from, though he knew he’d been walking. John tried to calm himself down, _deep breaths, four in five out, four in, five out_ , but it felt like the beginnings of a panic attack he couldn’t push away. He’d had those before. He hated them. John turned the corner and stopped short.

There was a man on the other side of the street who had glanced up and was now staring at him with bright, wide eyes. He was tall and thin, had curly hair and was smoking. His skin was an unhealthy pale and his black hair was greasy and matted, grown out of whatever style it had once been in. The hand with the cigarette dropped slowly from curved lips to his side as he turned and faced John fully. The cigarette fell to the pavement where it rolled into the gutter and went out in a plume of smoke. The stranger’s mouth opened and closed silently.  He took a hesitant step forwards.

The panic grabbed John, squeezed his chest and made his heart beat like a snare drum, staccato. He turned and fled. The sound of a squealing car and heavy footsteps followed him and John had never felt so much like a hunted animal before, blind in terror. Every breath shuddered, his legs felt watery and weak and his head ached, pounding with every step. Blood pulsing in his ears, air burned his throat and nose. He turned into an alleyway – any alley, just get away, now – and felt rough hands pull at him. John let them, recognised them, accepted his fate as inevitable as he sat heavily in the car seat he was being shoved into. When he looked up he saw Sherlock sitting beside him, expression that of a grim delight more happy then he’d ever appeared before. All but crazed. The man gripped his shirt front and pulled them together.

John’s throat let out a noise, a soft whine, and he curled up to stop himself retching as the taxi began to drive. Sherlock put a possessive hand on his back in that familiar way of his, shuffled up so that they sat pressed together, and whispered just once close into his ear: “I’ll never let him have you, John, Johnny. I’ll never give you up.”

The drive back was otherwise silent.

.

.

When they got back to the flat and John was feeling desperate and shaky and anxious, an ache between his eyes and a strong sensation of unrealism, he knew what was happening. He hadn’t lived through years and years of med school, of being a doctor, of having an alcoholic father then sister, to possibly not know what this was. Withdrawal: withdrawal symptoms plain as anything ever was nowadays. Withdrawal from what?

Sitting down heavily, exhausted from just climbing the stairs, he watched as Sherlock moved into the kitchen and out of sight, returning minutes later with a plate of toast, smothered in too much vulgar red jam. The jam oozed onto the white porcelain from the bread. It looked like a small animal bleeding out.

“No,” John said, shifting backwards on the armchair, even though he wanted it, craved it, so much. “No, please.”

“John,” the other man murmured, his voice reproaching as if he were cajoling a small, unreasonable child. “You have to eat something. It’s unhealthy not to.”

“No, no, I won’t. Stop it, Sherlock, stop it.” He could feel himself get hysterical, could see himself as if he were an external observer watching a man all but crouch and cower in the chair. The man’s face was flushed and he was trembling so hard it looked as if someone might be shaking him. There was something wrong, something he had to know, already knew, but he couldn’t think, wouldn’t be able to think, not after eating. He couldn’t eat, but he _needed_ it. Oh God he needed it. Just this time. Just once more.

Sherlock took another step closer and crouched at the foot of the chair. “For me, John? Just a little. Please?”

He put a hand on John’s thigh, leaning forward earnestly. John barely realised he’d moved until he felt the smart in his knuckles and saw the plate spin across the room to smash against the far wall. His shocked eyes were pinned on the white shards, the splatter of red against the beige paint, but he could feel the darkening of Sherlock’s face and the way his fingers tightened around the atrophied muscle in John’s leg.

It was John who moved first, jerking out of the chair in an attempt to knock Sherlock away so that he could escape. There wasn’t a conscious thought, only the instinctual knowledge that he wanted to eat but he couldn’t eat that, that he was weaker, that he’d be forced and humiliated and hurt and the primal understanding of survival shrieked at him to get away.

He’d barely put both bare feet on the carpet before he was tackled around the waist, brought supine to the floor with a thump that felt as if it had forced his lungs flat. Hands gripped one shoulder and his wrists were caught for a second before he wrenched them away, scrabbling at the face that loomed over him. Something snapped. Nothing was in his head except for the crazed fear that belonged to every trapped animal.

John punched wildly, throwing hits that did not seem to connect with anything at all. Scratching, slapping, hysteric and screaming. Nothing existed, his mind was an expanse of white noise. A cage formed around his throat and he couldn’t breath but he still fought, bucking and scrabbling, anything to get away, insensible to the pain. He slowed as his vision blotched and the only sound was the dying roar of his own racing heart. He pried at the fingers bruising his soft neck, trying to drag in even the smallest sip of air.

Then the hands loosened and he gasped once, twice, kicked feebly, before they were back and he couldn’t breathe anymore than if he’d been underwater. He was being dragged, but the only thing he could think of was air, of his lungs burning and chest heaving uselessly. He didn’t want to die, not like this, not want to die. No, no. Please. No. 

John’s eyes closed automatically as he was flipped over, landing on his face with his body trailing behind him brokenly. He was aware of movement, of distant pain. He sucked in whistling breaths when they were allowed and convulsed when they were not. Someone was screaming the same phrase over and over. There was something being forced into his mouth, making him gag and choke as fingers pushed it down his gullet when he failed to chew.

Then he could breath again. John didn’t move except for the stuttering heaves as he filled his lungs through a tortured throat, lying face down where he’s been discarded. He could feel time pass, slippery, like oil. He might have fainted, he didn’t know. Someone picked him up, curled him into their arms and he let them, limp body a hundred thousand points of sharp pain.

“Hush, hush,” Sherlock was saying, running a hand through the bloodied tangles of blond hair, pulling the pad of his thumb over John’s brow and down cheekbones to a quailing, split lower lip. “It’s okay, John, Johnny, love, Johnny. It’s okay.” Slivers of porcelain were picked out of his skin, the lightest of pressures around where he was cut and bruised and swollen. Something was being dribbled into his mouth, just a little at a time so he didn’t choke on it, and John swallowed dutifully. A damp cloth over his face, the familiar sting of antiseptic.

Sherlock was still talking to him, holding him close to his chest. John didn’t hear the words as the drug swept through his body and put him back to sleep.


	6. Chapter 6

The laptop snapped shut as soon as John entered the room, though he caught sight of a dark background and a title of the website page. _The Science of Deduction._ It rang a bell, somewhere, but he couldn’t tag it to anything meaningful other than it apparently put Sherlock into one of his bad moods. Either that or it had no relevance to his mood and he was angry at something else.  It wasn’t really possible to tell, sometimes; John only hoped that it wasn’t him. Sherlock tipped the expensive laptop to the floor with a violent swipe and ignored the other man, crossing his legs and drumming his fingers on the armrest. Hesitating somewhat in the doorway John clutched the rather large first aid kit he’d found in the kitchen to his chest like armour.

Sherlock turned and his frown softened somewhat. He still bared his teeth, scowling from beneath those sharp brows, but the creases between his eyes and brows eased off. John thought he looked quite manic when that expression was paired with the dried blood flaking from his forehead and around one eye. It took only a few steps to skirt around the armchair and arrive before the man, and John held out the fluorescent yellow bag like a peace offering. He looked cautiously at the deep scrape that stretched across Sherlock’s temple, couldn’t help the anxiety: as if even acknowledging the weakness was criminal and was going to bring punishment of some sort. Sherlock ignored him still and after a painful few moments John unzipped the case, fiddling with it to stop the assortment of tablet boxes and creams from falling out, then dumped the lot on the coffee table. This was normal, this he could do, even if he did feel vague in the head.

Tearing the top of the sachet John pulled out an antiseptic wipe and tentatively dabbed at the long, ugly cut as he leaned over the armrest to get to the immobile man. It was still scabbing over, weeping a bit in the middle, so must have happened only the last night when Sherlock had disappeared on another one of his night-time jaunts. It reminded John of the wounds he’d treated on soldiers who’d been caught in explosions, far enough from the actual blast but caught by flying shrapnel. There was no shrapnel in this one, no infection either. It’d heal over and the scar would eventually fade. He tried, for a moment, but couldn’t remember any of the soldier’s faces.

Sherlock had sat still as the dried brown blood was wiped away to reveal bruising, but he grimaced and pushed away the iodine spray and butterfly stitches. “Stop it,” he snapped, though without his usual anger. He was still staring at the laptop on the floor. Cowed for a moment John put away the butterfly stiches but clung on to the iodine.

“It’ll help prevent infection,” John said stubbornly, aware that he was speaking as if to an idiot or young child, and had the can knocked out of his hand for his efforts. It clanked and rolled under the sofa. John frowned and went to pick it up, hand and arm emerging dusty as he fished it out.

“I said, stop it!” Sherlock barked as he uncrossed his legs, looking up at his indecisive would-be first aider. “Come here.” His scowl had indeed softened, but that didn’t make John’s shuffle over to the man any less cautious.

With a sigh Sherlock reached forward and grabbed John’s hips, pulling him down onto his lap. John let his body be arranged, falling pliant, and willed the fear that brought his heart thudding to his mouth quiet. Somewhere on journey down the iodine can was pulled from John’s hand and tossed away. After a minute of shifting around - or Sherlock shifting John around - they ended up with John sitting mostly sideways between Sherlock’s legs, knees hooked over the armrest and spine curled uncomfortably so that his head lay on the other man’s collarbone. Sherlock hugged them close together by curling his arm around John’s back, and with his other hand on the concave stretch of John’s stomach he hummed tunelessly, ill temper still evident.

Clinging to Sherlock’s neat shirt John could feel the vibration of the sound through their chests, the breath across his forehead and in his hair. His body felt loose, mind intoxicated. A warm dry hand was under his top, fingers running over each ridge of every prominent rib, over the myriad of scabbed cuts and raised scars and burnt patches of skin and flesh before returning again to his stomach. John was sure that he’d once been muscled or at least toned, but the muscle was now only long strings over bones and his belly was just a hollowed space between jutting ribs and hips. The hand rubbed over the flesh there thoughtfully, finger pads tracing his navel. It was wrong, wrong wrong wrong, but John couldn’t stop his eyes from betraying him and closing, body relaxing into Sherlock’s possessive hold when it became too tired to hold itself tense.

Thoughts returned in the lull to dwell to the man on the street, the one with curly hair. They had been ever since it had happened, whenever that had been. The face had stuck in his head and wouldn’t leave, frighteningly persistent.

Sherlock had said that the man was Moriarty. That thought made John anxious, despite the haze and the lack of understanding. Something deep in his chest wouldn’t stop aching.

Sometime before he fell asleep their positions shifted gradually so that he was underneath, small body crushed into the armchair, Sherlock smothering him jealously.

.

.

John worked out later that he’d spent at least three days in bed, switching every few hours between aching delirium and restless sleep. He wasn’t entirely sure about the exact time. His memory still failed him. He’d guessed by counting the number of points in the fresh track marks up his inner arm.

.

.

The water was boiling away angrily in the kettle as John rooted methodically around in the cupboards. He couldn’t find the tea bags. He’d looked where they’d last been, and in the cupboard where they’d been before that, and then in all the remaining cupboards, thought it turned out to be useless and the tea caddy was nowhere to be found. Used to the unease of items moving – he was never positive he’d put them where they should go, though Sherlock never touched anything food related anymore unless it was already cooked – John switched to coffee, spooning the freeze dried stuff into his mug. He didn’t quite know what he was doing, only that he needed something to do. His eyes blurred and stung whenever he tried to read or write and the telly refused to work for him. He still couldn’t find his phone or computer. Sherlock’s laptop was a common sight around the rooms, but he didn’t dare ask to borrow it. Sherlock was on it now, furiously brooding over that website. The science one. It was all he ever seemed to do anymore.

He wasn’t really thinking about coffee, acting more mechanically than anything else, and it took a second for John to realise that the carton of milk was on the floor, cap rolling next to his feet and the liquid pooling across the tiles. Surprise, briefly mixed with fear. Because he needed to make his own food – though he wasn’t sure why – and he needed milk to do that. Bare feet were almost numb from the freezing cold floor but he felt the milk touch his skin and he stepped back violently.

Cloth, he needed a cloth. Kitchen paper laid down in sheets, he knelt to mop up the spill. More mechanical actions. It still felt like he was unpleasantly drunk, actions started before he could properly think them through. There was a presence behind him and John jerked forward in surprise, hands splashing down into the milk puddle. He looked back just before he was hauled bodily upwards, pulled so that his back collided heavily with Sherlock’s front.

“What did you do now?” Sherlock snarled, and John was suddenly - absurdly - aware of the full knife block on the counter well within Sherlock’s reach. He wriggled automatically but that only made the grip on him tighter.

“I’m sorry, it spilt, I spilt it,” John rambled, still squirming, not being able to get rid of the thought of knives. The pressure on his sides was bruising. “I’ll go buy some more, I’ll buy some more.” 

“No!” Sherlock jerked him backwards. “You do _not_ leave without my permission! You do not leave my _sight_!”

He was being hauled, manhandled out of the kitchen and squashed into the sofa. His feet and hands left smeared white prints on the material. Sherlock picked up his laptop from where it lay on the floor (it was a different one from last time, John noticed distantly), sitting so that the screen was well out of sight, and resumed his aggressive typing.

.

.

John woke as his shoulders were shaken, eyes snapping wide open but vision blurred and mind fogged. Sherlock’s face was above him, spitting curses. The world tilted and he was standing, leaning on the other man for support. Clothes were brushed down, John scrubbed at his face with his hands as if the action could scrub away the fuzziness.

“Come on, John, Johnny, come along,” Sherlock was coaxing, voice switching from sharp to velvet smooth in one syllable. John stumbled as he was led out of the room, out of the house, being dragged by an insistent tug on one arm. He only realised that he wasn’t wearing shoes when the little stones on the pavement pinched at his feet. John spent a moment on being glad that he’d fallen asleep before changing into his night clothes that evening before the thought was whisked away and he was bundled into the back seat of a small car. It was dark and cold. He tucked his hands into his sides and wanted desperately for the feeling of relaxed intoxication to return, knowing that he really shouldn’t but without knowing why.

Sherlock was talking to the man at the wheel, then on his phone, then they were driving and Sherlock was shouting again. He was anxious, John could tell. Worried, even. John wondered why. His hands and feet were going numb, though he wasn’t shivering so it couldn’t be that cold. The logic of that seemed flawed somehow. There was a pressure building up inside his skull.

Sherlock had gone still, angry still, and John lent away into the leather of the car seat. Directions and instructions were being shot at the driver like bullets. John looked to Sherlock’s lap, where a black handgun was being turned over in smooth hands. It looked familiar, but he couldn’t say how. The night passed and they were still driving, hours stretching into each other as John tried turning to a sleep that wouldn’t come. He was beginning to feel worry, agitation, wide awake. He couldn’t pull his eyes away from Sherlock’s gun.

Then they were pulling up. Looking up and out of the window from where he was curled, John could see an old building, a warehouse of some sort. It was barely light enough to see that the windows were all boarded up and the large company sign was broken and half falling off the brickwork.

Sherlock got out of the car, the gun and the driver going with him, both unseen.

“Oh, _very_ nice!” Sherlock called, spreading his arms wide. “Very spooky. Couldn’t have picked a better rendezvous myself. Or, well, maybe I could, you know…

“Oh, what was that? Not who you were expecting? No need to pull that face, dear. That’s mean. Aren’t you happy to see little old me? No? Oh, oh, and I would tell your police to stay away, if I were you. There might just be… consequences. And we wouldn’t want that, now, would we?”

John couldn’t see Sherlock, or the person he was talking to. He had yet to uncurl himself, to make his body understand that the fear wasn’t real, it wasn’t real, it wasn’t real. He watched the driver stand further away, hidden in the shadows as he primed his rifle, and saw another man in the window of the warehouse. His stomach was writhing, wanting to throw up. He trembled.

“Well?” Sherlock said. “Aren’t you going to say something? Have a question?” His voice was mocking. “That was the reason you came all the way out here, wasn’t it? Want to say it to the class?”

“John,” the other man said. His baritone was cracked and strained. “Where is he? What did you do to him?”

Sherlock laughed.


	7. Chapter 7

The voice he knew. Perhaps not the tone of it, or the words. It felt a bit more like déjà vu than memory. It still made John look up, stretch out his limbs over the cold seats and listen. But Sherlock was speaking again.

“Oh? You mean to say it was you who our dear friend ran into the other week? My, my, I was wondering about that. Poor John was terrified. It’s a sad thing to see a grown man so scared out of his wits – and a military man at that.” John could see Sherlock’s expression without needing to look, the leer painted in bold colours across mind’s eye. He tried to picture the other man instead, the one with curious, strange eyes and a mop of curly hair. That face was familiar. The hard material covering his body under the baggy jumper felt familiar too. Bullet-proof vest, his mind supplied.

“I swear, if you’ve hurt him in any way, I will hurt you. I will hunt you down and I will kill you.”

“Oh, don’t be silly. Why would I hurt him? Johnny and I have become very good friends.”

“Don’t say that, you bastard.” The man’s tone quavered with ground out anger, but though sounding very real it was a poor mask. There was a slight pause before his voice returned in a more level pitch. “What do you want from me? It’s not like you to arrange all of this just to gloat - unprofessional. I’d have thought you were better than that.”

“Subtle change in topic; are you really that distracted? But then, he is distracting. I should know. Oh, don’t be boring now, put that gun down. You should be able to work out what happens if I’m shot, shot at, and I should tell you now, I did have it arranged very specifically. It was quite fun, actually. Like writing a will only better.” Sherlock’s voice had that slow pantomime tone. “Oh, who ticked me off, I’ll give that wardrobe they liked to their sister-in-law instead. Only, well, it’s not really wardrobes we’re talking about, is it?

“There, that’s better. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t try that again. You don’t learn very well, do you? Arriving without proper backup, trigger happy. Look where that got you last time, h’m? Do you really want that to happen all over again?”

From the cold seat of the car, lying curled up and listing to both voices, John’s breath shuddered with emotion. It wasn’t actual memories he could think of, bring back, at least not declarative ones. But procedural memory - feelings, like motor skills – were tagged to this voice, these voices together. He’d long forgotten where or why or how he’d learnt his alphabet, or learnt to ride a bike. He still knew them by heart.

John closed his eyes, shutting off the pain of the cuts on his face and the swelling of abused fingers, the smell of new car and the taste of blood. Sherlock and Moriarty. Moriarty and Sherlock.

There was a case on the floor: a squat, metal thing. He’d seen it earlier, maybe more than once. John prised it open with shaking hands and pulled out the gun from inside.

“Let John go,” one of the men was saying, delicately, deliberately. “Never bother him, or his family or friends again. And I will never help in a case that has anything to do with you.”

“What? Back to the old hostage situation again? No, no no no. You’ve got me all wrong. Again, should I add! I must really be a complex person. You see, I’ve been thinking. And I’ve realised that, well, you’ve become really quite boring recently. Did that explosion manage to get you down so much? Or was it something else?” His grin was audible. “But as the saying goes, there’s plenty more fish in the sea. And okay, maybe not plenty when it comes to you, to us. But there are more, you know. I might have to learn a new language. Johnny too I suppose, but it’ll be worth it, no?”

“Let John go.” The voice was tremulous. “Let him go and I swear I’ll give you the best chase, Moriarty, the best game, ever.”

“Oh, but that’s not good enough. No, I’m afraid I’ve made up my mind on this. I’m afraid your arrogance has lead you too far astray this time. Like a dog gone to the bad, you’re going to have to be put down.”

“And John?”

“John? Well, I’ll hold on to John. I’ve become rather fond of old Johnny. Did you know – well, I suppose that you wouldn’t, would you? – I think he’s become rather fond of me, too. Comes to me to get patched up from all of those mysterious burns and hurts he keeps getting. A keepsake at least, fond memories of old times. What do you think?”

“I’ll kill him myself before I let that happen.”

“Oh, that’s harsh. That’s really harsh. Really? Would you really do it?”

The man’s answer is flat, instant and bitten out as if tasting rancid. “Yes.”

“Well then.” The car door opened and a face peered in. Hands pulled him out, steadied him as he stumbled over his own bare feet. To John the well-known hands seemed hesitant, anxious as they clung too hard not to avoid pain. He leant on the man, holding on to his suit. John’s legs felt like the bones were dissolving, weak and filled with pins and needles. The world spun. He was breathing hard, trying not to retch, when the man stepped away and left him standing alone. His face had hardened, there were deep shadows under his brows. John looked to him, unsteady, then to the man standing fifteen or so yards away across the car park.

That man’s face was long. His mouth was ever so slightly open, the eyes betrayed.

“Well, isn’t this a turn up!” the man behind John giggled, but it was strained. “Go on then, Sherlock. Have a go, if you don’t want him with me that much. Take a pot shot at our loyal friend here. You won’t avoid it, will you, John?”

John didn’t move, didn’t dare breath as he watched the small handgun levelled at him, the tall man with the curly hair behind it. His throat bobbed as he swallowed. Long finger cocked the gun. It fired.

The sound was powerful, crushing. It almost sent John to his knees, though he forced his painful body upright. Behind him, Moriarty clapped, inspecting the car’s smashed window. “Was that nerves or are you really that bad a shot?” he asked, gleefully. “Have another go. Go on.”

The gun fired again, and then again. John couldn’t close his eyes but he flinched each time. The reports shattered his thoughts as effectively as the bullets punched through metal and glass. A fourth shot and Sherlock was breathing heavily, both hands supporting the gun and both of them visibly shaking. The fifth shot hit the concrete far enough from him that John didn’t need to look down to see the messy hole. Sherlock lowered his gun.

“Is that it?” Moriarty said. He came up from behind John and pulled him, unresisting, in close by the waist. Sherlock’s expression was stricken. “If that’s it, I’m afraid it’s bye-bye time. It was nice knowing you. John, say bye-bye.”

John’s head lolled at the movement. Trying to understand the situation was like trying to run through water, trying to hold it in his hands. Every time he laboriously caught some important piece of the puzzle something else slipped away. He pulled away from the man holding him, using his weight – slight though it was now – more than actual muscle. He didn’t want to be between these two men. He didn’t know what he wanted.

The man with the short hair and expensive suit held John closer. The muffled report came half a second after Sherlock dropped and rolled, and half a second before John swung his own handgun, knocking Moriarty across the face with it.

He might have not remembered anything else, but muscle memory stayed and with perfect accuracy John brought the gun up and shot the man in the warehouse window. He didn’t see what happened to the body, only that it disappeared with the bang and there was one less point of danger, one less weapon to consider. He turned to the driver and before he was given the chance to aim was shot in the chest. 

The world turned a bit hazy, black around the edges, then gravely and hard. John sucked in breaths and got grit in his mouth. Someone rolled him over and was patting him down, frantic and with blood dripping from a gash over his cheekbone. Sherlock, John thought, then: Moriarty. He felt like he’d been slapped into a brick wall by a giant hard. Bullet-proof vest, he thought distantly. Bruising, occasional internal damage. 

He looked up in time to see a snarling Moriarty shoot the driver in the knee, and then in the stomach. The driver fell to the ground with a drawn out scream. It ended with a bullet in the face. There was shouting, he was being moved, dragged across the gravel with his head hitting the ground in bursting lights and pain with every step. The unmistakable wail of sirens.

John rolled and pointed his gun at Sherlock – Moriarty – whoever the hell it was who he thought he knew. John’s hand shook wildly. There was no way he could have missed from two feet.  He didn’t shoot. The man’s black eyes looked wild. They looked betrayed. Running footsteps behind him.

In the night, with his dark suit, hair and eyes, the man was easily lost.

.

.

Sitting in the back of an ambulance, John tried not to flinch as the nurse checked him over. He stared hard at his knees and ignored the man with the curly hair hovering to one side. He didn't know what was happening, really, only vaguely picking up such news that he'd been kidnapped, and while kidnapped he'd been assumed dead, and that his friend wasn't his friend after all but a psychopathic crime lord. Seven months, apparently. Seven months that he didn’t know whether felt more like seven weeks or seven years. There were Sherlocks and Moriartys and Inspector Detectives and apologies, endless voiceless apologies. Sorry to give up on you. Sorry to forget about you. Sorry we left you in the hands of a madman for seven months.

Answering the questions gently pressed at him after the nurse had managed to chase off the police force – but not the man with curly hair – John tried not to feel anything as his sleeve was rolled up and the bruises, blisters and track marks were revealed. The nurse only paused for a brief moment, professional, but the man hissed, swore and turned away. His gloved hands were in tight fists before he hugged long arms around himself.

John returned to looking at his knees, answering a new landslide of questions. It's okay, you're going to be fine, the nurse was saying, her low tone not particularly comforting. Some emotion similar to shame crawled across his skin, crawling out of the track marks, shame and stark relief when he was declared fit to go home with more than a couple of severe conditions he didn't bother to consider refusing. John was sure the memories wouldn't return just like that when he got home, like waking from a nightmare. He was a romantic, yes, but he was also a very good doctor. He suspected some blanks would never be filled in – not properly, anyway, not as they should be. There would be long-lasting side effects, withdrawal symptoms to deal with. Relationships to be reformed, or not. There would no doubt be problems with the legal issue of actually turning out alive rather than the assumed dead.

And who was to say whether this home was just as fake as the last one? Whether Sherlock with the curly hair was just as fake as the last one?

He wanted to go home, where ever and however fake that was, anyway (almost wanted the short haired Sherlock, because this was too much, and at least with him things were reliable - not new, not upturned like this). He wanted people to stop looking at him like he wasn't actually there or couldn't see them: pitying looks and looks of incomprehension. Like the way people looked from the corner of their eyes at the ill homeless or at those with a particularly obvious mental disorder.

A momentary pause in which he sat on his own, trying to stop the tremors running up and down his limbs. A man came down to sit next to him, the one who had tried to shoot him earlier and had failed. The familiar one. He looked awkward, all angles and fearful tension and unhealthy pale, drawn skin. He smelt like a chain smoker.

John linked fingers gingerly and tugged the blanket closer around his shoulders. "Moriarty?" he tried, because honestly, he wasn't even going to try to sort out the mess of names and faces in his head.

The man glanced at him with something akin to horror mixed with insult and a wry, bitter humour. "Not Moriarty, then," John said tentatively. "Ah. Right. Sorry."

"Sherlock," Sherlock said, running one hand over his face and scalp before tucking it into a coat pocket. He tucked his chin down and stoically didn't look up. 

"Yeah, Sherlock. Okay." The name fit. John wondered how it had ever fit anyone else. "Well, names, oh well. Who needs them. What's in a name, huh?" He realised that he was babbling, but it felt okay in a strange, familiar way. "Whatever it was Shakespeare wrote."

Sherlock looked up then, incomprehension on his face. "Alas, poor Yorik?" he said, the first honest confusion John had seen in too long.

A picture drew itself in John's mind as he laughed gingerly, a picture of two grown men fooling around with a human skull on the mantelpiece, drunk on cheap beer and nicotine patches. The room was criminally messy. It was warm and filled with home. John didn't have a clue whether the scene had actually happened: it seemed likely and unlikely in equal measures. It could have been a strange dream brought on by the effects of one drug overdose too many. John cast that thought off and decided that it didn't really matter if it wasn't a memory after all.

As long as he had plenty of time to make some new ones, it really didn't matter.


	8. Chapter 8

**Epilogue**

 

A month had passed since John had returned and life was not back to normal.

Sherlock cradled the violin under his chin, feeling the roughness of the strings under his finger tips, the smooth neck under his thumb. His bow was on the table, however, and he was playing a quiet, distracted pizzicato. It was only one in the morning and he knew John was awake. The plink of the strings did little to distract his thoughts from the man upstairs. That was happening more often, he noted with half a mind, and filed that away to add to or deduct from the reliability of previous observations.

Mrs Hudson had burst into tears upon seeing John for the first time in seven months, when they’d arrived home finally, _finally_. Sherlock didn’t understand many things about people, but he had understood that. He had thought he might have cried, felt like crying, when Moriarty had dragged John from the car with all the glee of performing a cheap conjuror’s trick. It appeared, though, that he’d abused his tear ducts once too often in a fake performance, and he hadn’t cried. He’d also felt like tearing Moriarty apart with his bare hands – or better, a blunt knife, serrated: perhaps a grapefruit knife, that would be slower and therefore more painful, or maybe something creative like a cheese plane or a hand drill or – but he hadn’t. Moriarty had got away before he could have, and he was sorry for that, the consequences be damned.

Sherlock was used to complete, impartial and unbiased observation. He could look at a child’s little corpse and not be distracted by the unimportant, trivial thoughts that seemed to distract everyone else from the interesting things: like why the bows on the shoelaces were perfectly done up but the ribbons on the dress were not, or why there were scuff marks made by climbing on her knees and hands but no corresponding marks on any nearby trees. No, most people were more worried about the most obvious, useless points.

He’s known for a long time that this was due to emotion. That the sight of a four year old girl with pig-tails and a broken spine evidently caused some emotion that hindered the objective thought process was obvious (what he still didn’t quite get was the _why_ ). Ten months ago, he’d thought he’d been above all of that.

Then John had happened, and just after Sherlock was recovering from the blow of finding that, yes, he valued spending time in this one person’s company over spending it with himself or with any one other person from a large, random sample population, and that yes, he was happier to a significant degree when John was around than when he was not. Two months of study time, with anomalous results making up for less than five percent of the data. John’s presence had forced him to redefine several large factors that had dictated his life thus far.  And that was strange. Unsettling. The metaphorical shift had not been easy nor entirely pleasant. 

But it was voluntary, because John’s presence was _nice_. 

He’d barely had time to finish collecting his data, just about enough time to consider being able to disprove his null hypothesis, when Moriarty had flounced onto the scene with his bombs and his promises of alleviating boredom. Sherlock wasn’t one for wishing, he’d stopped at nine years of age when he’d calculated that for the last three years a statistically insignificant number of his wishes had actually came true (then at twelve years of age he’d realised that the statistics he’d done were all wrong, but after re-doing them it still came out with the same result). Wishes were unrealistic, over-emotional and didn’t cause or increase the chances of causing the desired outcome.

Sherlock now wished with all his heart that he’d shot the bastard Moriarty in the face at the first opportunity. It was unrealistic, over-emotional and wouldn’t ever change the past. It was, he saw, another example of emotion disrupting the clean, clinical lines of truth. Only this time in himself.

He hadn’t cried, but he knew why Mrs Hudson had. In the morning light, in the chill of October, John had barely looked alive. His skin was dry and bruised and seemed to cover a skeleton, a sad sack of bones that trembled uncontrollably and was suffering from severe malnutrition and mistreatment. His eyes were ringed with discoloured bags and held little to no recognition for their landlady, for their home. And that was with his too-large jumpers and baggy jeans covering up most of him. Sherlock had stared at John’s hands for minutes, minutes and minutes before connecting the pattern of swelling on his fingers to the pattern the heel of a shoe makes upon impact with a particular uneven surface.

He should have seen that instantly. Emotion again. Damn it.

And now he was plucking away at his violin strings because he was frightened – frightened! – that he would disturb John, John who had not taken his medication to help with the withdrawal process and would so be lying wide awake in bed, suffering from secondary insomnia which was really doing his still healing body no favours whatsoever.

An unpleasant, achy, dehydrated-dry feeling had taken residence in Sherlock’s ribcage area some time ago and was refusing to go away. It felt a little like embarrassment or shame. It felt like fear. It also hurt, like hunger pains, like broken ribs. It made his throat seize and his shoulders tense up. It made him _want_ to lose sight of rationality.

All of those months, all of those weeks and nights and nights where he’d done nothing but sit and stare and moan to anyone who would listen, just so he could hide the fact that there was a painful quiet he didn’t know how to fill and an empty space that nothing would fit into. How many times had he sat on the sofa doing nothing at all while somewhere John was being beaten or starved or electrocuted or pumped so full of drugs that he couldn’t even tell the difference between the man he lived with, his friend, his _friend God dammit,_ and the soon-to-be-dead-bastard who was beating, starving and electrocuting him?

It made him want to scream, smash something, bring out the long forgotten friends of cocaine and morphine. It made him want to hold on to John and never let go, not ever, never once let him leave his sight until they were both dead, dead and dust and Moriarty was smeared into the ground like a bug, utterly destroyed for ever and ever.

None of those things would help John in the slightest. The treasured violin was put down in its case before he could damage that as well. He realised that he was shaking. Sherlock reached for his cigarettes before remembering that he couldn’t smoke in the flat because of John, because it would be bad for John. He slapped on a nicotine patch instead, then another, then another, then another.

By the time John came down in the morning he’d managed to tear off the patches, control his nausea, vomiting and stomach pain, and throw his cigarettes into the concentrated HCl he’d been saving.

.

.

“Sherlock,” John called from inside his room. Sherlock didn’t move for a moment from where he was standing outside his flatmate’s door, then with more uncertainty than he’d have liked, entered. “Hey,” John said quietly, not looking up from where he was sat on the end of his bed, folding shirts.

The room was, as usual, organised and tidied to the point of total death of character. There was next to nothing out that belonged specifically to John Watson. Sherlock hesitated, then sat down against the wall, facing the other man. It was cold, but John wore only a light summer top and jeans. He was shivering. Neither said anything more.

It wasn’t an awkward silence. Sherlock didn’t care enough for social convention for an awkward silence to occur, at least not for him. But it wasn’t a very comfortable silence either.

Finishing with the shirts John set the small pile to one side and pulled the few pairs of already folded trousers closer to him. He was half way through rolling up the second pair before he stopped, carefully unrolled them and started to fold the jeans into tidy squares instead.

“John?” Sherlock said, cautiously. John hummed a note in response but didn’t say anything. Ruthlessly folding his way through the trousers he finished, picked up the shirt he’d put down forty seconds ago, shook it out and refolded it. He moved to the rest of the shirt pile.

“John,” Sherlock tried again, and this time got a quick glance up. He didn’t know what else to say. He remembered white sheets of paper, one for the patient, one for the flat mate, clean blocks of text intersected with lists, handed out on the first morning, the first trip to the clinic of many. They hadn’t been given a PTSD sheet only because John had assured them that he’d already been through that and he really, really didn’t need another lecture on it. They’d come away with neat lists of symptoms of the withdrawal syndrome, a prescription and an appointment card for the therapist.

John shook out his jeans and was folding them again, in rectangles this time.

This was not neat. This was not anything like those white sheets filled with words. Sherlock had memorised each and every symptom the first time he’d read them from both sets of lists. None of them had said anything about falling, about being not okay.

“Sherlock,” John was saying, head bowed and voice, cracked with exhaustion, rushed. “Sherlock, I know this sounds stupid, but listen, just, listen, please. Sherlock, I am really, really sorry.”

Sherlock hadn’t said those lists aloud: he never intended to. The stark font of the letters printed itself over Sherlock’s eyelids nevertheless. Depression; self harm; suicide; suicidal intent; suicidal ideation; violence; panic attacks; impaired concentration; impaired memory. More. Paragraphs more. The words spun and brought up one hundred links and signs and one hundred things he didn’t want. He didn’t want a list of what John was feeling, spelt out like a pre-written practical joke. He knew how to spot depression or suicide. He just didn’t know how to prevent it.

“You can laugh now,” John was saying, “but you’ve realised, everyone’s realised by now, that for that time, when I was there, all of that time, I thought – I thought that _he_ was _you_.”

Of course everyone knew that. He wasn’t surprised. Moriarty had fooled everyone before, after all, including himself: Sherlock Holmes, consulting detective, whose job it was to see through that sort of act. And that was with a disguise that was wholly different from the actual man, when he hadn’t been suffering from blood loss, a severe concussion and enough amnesiacs to make a lesser person a drooling, senile mess.

“I thought Moriarty was you, Sherlock, and I know that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever said but I did, but I swear I take it back because you’re nothing alike.” John was still looking down at his shirt crumpled in two shaking fists, as he laughed at himself humourlessly. “It’s probably disgusting to you, and you can’t stand how stupid, dense and dull I was. And I’m sorry, Sherlock, I really am sorry.”

John stopped talking, trailing off into half started words and mumbles. Sherlock wasn’t listening. He didn’t want to listen to the apologies: all unnecessary, all awkward. The minutes ticked past. John put down his clothes.  Sherlock could hear him shuffling on the bed, though he didn’t turn to look. John seemed to think that Sherlock should have been surprised. Sherlock wasn’t surprised in the least. He could see exactly and more than anyone else just how much he was like Moriarty. If there was disgust involved it was disgust in himself.

Because the thought of John unable to leave, dependent on him: always there and always going to be there, _was_ a temptation. He thought of what Moriarty had done and wanted it for himself, just a little, just one tiny part of him that had decided on emotion over rationality. _Why had Moriarty got to keep John for seven months while he has only had him for four, albeit counting?_ Sherlock hated that part of himself. He wanted to isolate it, cut it out with a scalpel and lock it away somewhere where it’d never be found. Where John would never find it.

He couldn’t cut it away.

He also couldn’t help but think, _did it hurt Moriarty to lose John as much as it hurt me_?

He hoped so. He hoped it hurt more.  He hoped Moriarty hurt enough to die.

Frivolous, wasteful, useless wishes.  

Sherlock gritted his teeth, unused to the feeling of gathering frayed courage. He was about to say to John _you’re wrong, we are alike. We’re more alike than you know, and you’d know better than anyone else_ , when he looked up at the other man. The words were half formed and filling up his mouth, but they stopped and died before they passed over straight teeth. A wordlessness settled over him.

The sedatives were still on the bedside table, the hated white pills, along with a glass of water. Light NREM, Sherlock observed distantly, stage one or two. John’s closed eyes looked asleep rather than drugged. They looked less not-okay.

Did John ever fall asleep in front of Moriarty like that?

Sherlock stayed, unable to leave, for the rest of the night.

.

. 

Five months had passed since John had returned and life was not back to normal.

Spring was undeniably occurring even in the bleakest, most miserably English morning. John still wore more layers and more of his obscenely thick cabled jumpers than most would in the freezing depths of winter. Neither layers nor jumpers could hide the fact that he’d barely put on weight past the stage of currently not dying of starvation. Insomnia added to and worsened the increase in the night terrors that woke him screaming and made him weary, anxious and irritable.

Sherlock no longer let himself dance cautiously around the man after a fight detailing the causal link between irritability and Sherlock acting _like I’m fucking unstable_. That fight had involved shouting and then fists. John had won it on both aspects, and Sherlock wasn’t entirely sure if it was because he had intended that.

He did his best to concede to his flat-mate’s wishes, though, and stubbornly insisted that it was.

They’d laughed about it later, anyway.

There had been neither hide nor hair of Moriarty, and Sherlock suspected that was just as well. Every day he waited for a message, a clue – hoping that it would never come, and at the same time wanting it desperately so that he could finally start to destroy Moriarty. And he would. He hadn’t forgotten.

There were mornings when John came downstairs only to fall into fitful, much needed sleep on the sofa. There were evenings when Sherlock would realise that the day they had shared wasn’t even committed to memory and that no amount of prompting would bring it back. Days that included men in expensive suits with short black hair and Irish accents, and more flinching away and avoidance than could really be called healthy or normal. John still occasionally slipped into depression or moments of uncharacteristic terror. He suffered from headaches and a pain in not only one leg and a shoulder.

The damage was done. Maybe life would never go back to normal.

.

.

“Anagram of the violin string names,” John said distractedly from where he was hunched over The Guardian. He looked up, repressing a mild wince at the movement. “They’re G, A, D, B? Or was it E?”

“Aged,” Sherlock replied instantly, not taking his eyes off from the reading of his 3dp balance. It seemed _Aglossa cuprina_ larvae didn’t take as well to even slightly saline conditions as he’d previously thought. The little grey bodies weren’t as distracting as he had hoped they would be.

The email sat next to him placidly on his phone screen. Sherlock knew from the first few sentences that the case looked, for once, interesting: full of death threats and mysterious missing papers. He also knew it looked full of long, sleepless nights of research, petty arguments and working in The City next to men in expensive suits and very likely men in expensive suits with short black hair and Irish accents. Most likely a bit of running too. Running was never good when the body threatened random attacks of cramps, seizures and pain.

Sherlock had received the email three hours and eleven minutes ago. His finger was still hovering over the delete button, drawn and repelled at once.

John didn’t bother saying anything further as he scribbled down letters on his latest crossword. He’d complained a little while ago that they’d made him feel old and sad, but he hadn’t managed to give them up yet. After a while of staring at the page he said absently: “anything new, then?”

Sherlock tossed him his phone carefully: high, arching flight, slow, aimed to the left of the man. John caught it with one hand and read the email with raised brows but an otherwise neutral face. John wasn’t the sort to overestimate his own abilities, nor was he stupid. He knew.

Sherlock was still facing the kitchen table but he’d stopped registering the Tupperware of wriggling maggots.

“Well, what are you waiting for?” John said, folding up his newspaper. His face had formed a small, well worn grin. “My therapist’s been pestering me to no end. I haven’t updated my blog in ages.”


End file.
